The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Alexandra Rose Day in Sheffield
A rare film of Sheffield in 1915 with well-to-do women of the city out selling flowers on the streets to raise money for Alexandra Rose Day, and visiting recently wounded soldiers.
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Overview
With less than a year into the war, women and girls in their traditional white dresses are giving out flowers to those donating to the new charity, with horse and carts as well as buses passing by, and the mandatory boys in flat caps looking on. The women organisers are named, as too are the places in Sheffield where they sell. One such is the Victoria Wesleyan School where convalescing soldiers with their arms in slings join in the jovial mood of the day.
Alexandra Rose Day was first held on 26 June 1912 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival in Britain of Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Princess Alexandra married the future King Edward VII and was at the time of the film the Queen Mother. That first occasion was confined to London, although it raised Π32,000 (equivalent to Π3.2m in 2014). It spread across the whole country the next year. It was the first fund raising event where people received something to wear for their donation, no matter how much was, secretly, given. The Wesleyan Church became available as a military hospital just weeks into war, and several hundred wounded Belgian soldiers and refugees arrived in Sheffield soon after.
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